Herein, related art may be discussed to put the invention in context. Related art labeled “prior art” is admitted prior art; related art not labeled “prior art” is not admitted prior art.
Enterprise and other large computer systems and networks can be centrally managed via management software that can present a graphic representation of a computer system to a human administrator and that can respond to reconfigurations of that graphic representation by implementing analogous reconfigurations on the actual system or network. Such management software faces a challenge of informing a user which actions (e.g., start, stop, rename, delete, create, etc.) may be performed on which objects (e.g., networks, network switches, network nodes, servers, partitions, virtual partitions and machines, shared resource domains, clusters, etc.).
Typically, available actions are presented in a menu of actions; the menu can be drop-down, pop-up, or permanently visible. Each time an object is selected, a menu of actions available for that object can be generated and presented to the user, e.g., in response to a “get” request by the user's web browser-based interface. However, the latencies involved each time a selection is changed can detract from the user experience; moreover, generating and communicating web pages every time a selection is changed can impose utilization and bandwidth burdens. An alternative approach is to provide a full list of actions that remains the same across objects, and send an error message if the user selects an action that does not apply to the selected object. However, the error messages can detract from the user experience. What is needed is an improved approach to presenting available actions to an administrator/user for centrally managed computer systems and networks.